Ten years later, the facts are still coming out about the events of September 11, 2001. The first F-16s scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base were unarmed – the pilots knew the only way to stop a hijacked plane would be to crash into it. A little later, according to newly-released tapes, NORAD elected to ignore Vice President Cheney’s order to shoot down suspect aircraft.

The 9/11 Commission Report remains the best overall account of what happened during the attacks ten years ago. However, the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission’s investigative records remain sealed at the National Archives in Washington. About two-thirds of the material is still classified, years after the commission members wanted it released to the public. Included in the sealed archive is the complete transcript of the commission’s interview with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

While some people refer to “the official story” of the 9/11 attacks, there actually isn’t one. The closest the Bush administration ever came to issuing an official account was former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the commission in April 2004. This was when Rice claimed, incredibly, that no-one “could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile.” Condi’s testimony basically amounted to a plea of incompetence on behalf of the U.S. government.

Robert Scheer points out that the 9/11 Commission was never able to definitively answer some of the the most important questions regarding the origin and motives of the 9/11 attackers. The truth might lead to a re-examination of U.S. foreign policy, and possibly embarrassment for some powerful people associated with bad decisions — both overt and covert.

We do not grasp that Osama bin Laden’s twisted vision of a world of indiscriminate violence and terror has triumphed.

…We could have gone another route. We could have built on the profound sympathy and empathy that swept through the world following the attacks. The revulsion over the crimes that took place 10 years ago, including in the Muslim world, where I was working in the weeks and months after 9/11, was nearly universal. The attacks, if we had turned them over to intelligence agencies and diplomats, might have opened possibilities not of war and death but ultimately reconciliation and communication, of redressing the wrongs that we commit in the Middle East and that are committed by Israel with our blessing. It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too. The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.

UPDATE:Russ Baker: Newly-revealed evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks.

[T]he FBI, for reasons unknown, failed to provide the information to Congressional 9/11 investigators or to the …9/11 Commission, and thus it has remained a secret for the past decade.

…The 9/11 Commission report “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials” financed Al Qaeda. But this carefully worded statement does not foreclose the possibility that members of the Saudi royal family personally provided financing, or that senior officials funded companies or outsiders that in turn provided financing.

UPDATE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that as an engineer he’s sure the twin towers were not brought down by jetliners.

Listen, you should be the money czar, or at least your counsel should be sought and respected, but in the interest of full disclosure, don’t you honestly think it time to disassociate yourself from the building trades?

Why are banksters never allowed to suffer the consequences of the poor choices they made? Everyone else must…perhaps it has something to do with rights given them in some supreme court ruling or other.

It could have been done. When the banks were bailed out in order to save the system as a whole, the rescue could have been strcutured to wipe out equity holders as well as the incentive plans tied to equity (as in stock options and stock grants to executives). This was described as a pre-packaged bankruptcy. In bankruptcy the creditors are paid first and the equity holders usually get nothing. So this deal would have putting all the banks into a pre-packaged bankruptcy where the equity holders and the executives would have been wiped out, and then re-emerged from banpruptcy with new equity-holders (the taxpayers) and compensation plans which started from scratch and would have had to be approved by the new equity holders (the US treasury).

But if your largest campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs, then this is not likely.

It was the self-inflicted damage post-9/11 that was the worst. America’s reputation has been damaged, perhaps permanently. We have lost quite a few of our rights. And there is no debating the cost, in thousands of lives and more than $7 trillion.

Tool
A person, typically male, who says or does things that cause you to give them a ‘what-are-you-even-doing-here’ look. The ‘what-are-you-even-doing-here’ look is classified by a glare in the tool’s direction and is usually accompanied by muttering of how big of a tool they are. The tool is usually someone who is unwelcome but no one has the balls to tell them to get lost. The tool is alwasys making comments that are out-of-place, out-of-line or just plain stupid. The tool is always trying too hard to fit in, and because of this, never will.

YOU are the obvious reason Krugman closed the comments on his concise comment about the fake heros of 911. The same people who would – and did – think nothing of inhabiting Pat Tillman’s body for their own dishonorable purposes WHILE HE WAS STILL ALIVE.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday canceled his subscription to The New York Times after columnist Paul Krugman characterized the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks as “an occasion for shame.”

Rumsfeld tweeted, “After reading Krugman’s repugnant piece on 9/11, I canceled my subscription to the New York Times this AM.”

Former Democratic Senator Bob Graham on Monday called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation into 9/11 after a report found that links between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers were never disclosed by the FBI to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks.

“In the final report of the congressional inquiry, there was a chapter related primarily to the Saudi role in 9/11 that was totally censured, every word of the chapter has been withheld from the public,” Graham said on MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show.

“Some of the other questions we ought to be asking are if we know that the Saudis who lived in San Diego and now apparently in Sarasota received substantial assistance, what about the Saudis who lived in Phoenix, Arizona? Or Arlington, Virginia? … What was happening in those places?

Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, “his reaction was not fear, but utter relief.” Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, “tell you what to do.”

The final 28-page section of the Inquiry’s report, which deals with “sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers,” was entirely blanked out. It was kept secret from the public on the orders of former President George W. Bush and is still withheld to this day, Graham said.

This in spite of the fact that Graham and his Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, both concluded the release of the pages would not endanger national security.

The grounds for suppressing the material, Graham believes, were “protection of the Saudis from embarrassment, protection of the administration from political embarrassment … some of the unknowns, some of the secrets of 9/11.”

That George W. sure did keep us safe, didn’t he?

Graham is one of my favorite senators ever, NOT to be confused with Phil Graham, who was a thug.

According to Gerald Posner, Zubaydah told the fake “Saudis” about three Saudi princes and the head of Pakistan’s Air Force. All four of these men were dead by February 2003, six months before Posner’s book was published. Also, the Zubaydah interrogation tapes have been reported destroyed.

It’s an interesting story, but there seems to be no way to corroborate it. As far as we know, none of the other al-Qaeda bigs in custody provided similar info.

OTOH the 9/11 hijackers were mostly Saudis, which strongly suggests additional Saudi involvement of some kind. The problem is, the Saudi government isn’t going to tell us anything they don’t want us to know.

I think Americans were being patient and letting ‘authorities’ do their job and hoping for the best.

But here we are, ten disappointing years later, and we still don’t have the true answers.

Richard likes to tout the 9/11 Commision report, but in my opinion it was a sham from the start. Doesn’t start up until over a year after the attacks and gives them 15 million to do the job. Doesn’t add up to me.

I do like the 9/11 Commission’s report. There is no better analysis of the national security failures that enabled the attacks to succeed. It does not have all the answers, and additional information has come out since the publication of the report 7 years ago. Also, a lot of details remain classified despite the efforts of the commissioners to make documents public.

Most of the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act originated during the Reagan administration. Congress rejected them on constitutional grounds during the 1980s. The first Bush Administration then made similar proposals, which were again rejected. The USA PATRIOT Act was drafted quickly because the wish list of unconstitutional law enforcement methods already existed.

In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was signed into law by President Clinton. This law included Senator Orrin Hatch’s long-sought provision to limit the right of habeas corpus. Just prior to the 9/11 attacks, Congress was about to pass a law repealing the secret evidence provisions of the 1996 Antiterrorism Act.

Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9/11 generally rest on reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading activity in companies whose stock plummeted after the attacks. Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation. For example, the volume of put options–investments that pay off only when a stock drops in price–surged in the parent companies of United Airlines on September 6 and American Airlines on September 10–highly suspicious trading on its face. Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 9/11. A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. These examples typify the evidence examined by the investigation. The SEC and the FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous. Joseph Cella interview (Sept. 16, 2003; May 7, 2004; May 10-11, 2004); FBI briefing (Aug. 15, 2003); SEC memo, Division of Enforcement to SEC Chair and Commissioners, “Pre-September 11, 2001 Trading Review,” May 15, 2002; Ken Breen interview (Apr. 23, 2004); Ed G. interview (Feb. 3, 2004).

This is great stuff. Ron Paul versus Rick Santorum on defense policy and the reasons for the 9/11 attacks. America is at war but the PTB don’t want to say why we are fighting. Unless you really believe Good vs. Evil is a sound basis for national security strategy.

Must-read: Michael Moore’s moving story of what it was like to be hated for criticizing Bush and the invasion of Iraq. Some of us got called traitors too, but Moore had to hire ex-Navy SEALs for protection.

I did a blog post about that Rumsfeld quote in 2008 after hearing a talk show host on NPR tell a caller that he must have said or meant “billion”, not “trillion. I did some research on google because I distinctly remembered a young girl bring the subject up with Jack Murtha and Jim Moran on C-Span who also couldn’t tell a billion from a trillion. My post proves he said trillion and all the links still work.

An important update to my “2.3 Trillion Dollar Toilet Seats” post is that the 20 billion dollar computer system that gets blamed by Rumsfeld’s aide was destroyed by whatever hit the pentagon, according to Jessie Ventura.

Your research says that The Patriot Act was taking shape during the Reagan administration which is completely credible. You have to admit that the supporters of that bill must have creamed their pants when the trade towers fell. I practically pissed mine, knowing what was going to happen to our civil liberties that day. But I’m a conspiracy theorist.

That is quite a story by Michael Moore. It’s amazing how a hero who never backed down from telling the truth had to bring such danger to his family and himself for doing so. I liked the story at the end, when the man who yelled “asshole” in his ear backstage came grappling at his feet to apologize after finding out he was indeed a hero for standing up when practically nobody else with that level of fame except for the Dixie Chicks were doing so. Of course, they also had their families threatened.

I’m proud to say that I was carrying my Impeach Bush sign before he gave his Oscar speech.

In light of Bob Grahams call for reopening an investigation of 911 in light of the new revelations about Bush and the CIA hiding information about the terrorists, and Saudi Arabia’s involvement, it would be every American’s duty to watch or re-watch Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911” which, as Michael himself pointed out, is available online for free, here.

Although it starts out with a very responsible expose’ of the stolen election in 2000, the film is mostly based on a book called “House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties”

The film is loaded with horrifying facts about the Bush family and the people in their orbit. It is also very funny.

Well Richard, since the plane crashed short of the pentagon, there was likely lawn, shrubbery, possibly even a bicycle messenger or two in the bouncing mix that actually formed the offending ‘projectile’.

Therefore it is not altogether without substance to characterize the offending ‘projectiles’ as “whatever”.

I don’t hate Moore for criticizing Bush and the invasion of Iraq. I hate Moore for being a partisan hack who makes up lies and ignores other facts to fit his narrative.

You wouldn’t notice, but liberals have to be very careful to report the truth because even the Chamber of Commerce will feed them false stories to make them look like bad journalists. This has been proven.

From Richards link to Michael Moore’s new book exerpt:

[The] initial overwhelming response to Fahrenheit 9/11 spooked the Bush White House, convincing those in charge of his re-election campaign that a movie could be the tipping point that might bring them down. They hired a pollster to find out the effect the film would have on voters. After screening the movie with three different audiences in three separate cities, the news Karl Rove received was not good. The movie was not only giving a much-needed boost to the Democratic base (who were wild about the film), it was, oddly, having a distinct effect also on female Republican voters.

The studio’s own polling had already confirmed that an amazing one-third of Republican voters – after watching the movie – said they would recommend the film to other people. But the White House pollster reported something even more dangerous – 10% of Republican females said that after watching Fahrenheit 9/11, they had decided to either vote for John Kerry or to just stay home. In an election that could be decided by only a few percentage points, this was devastating news.

The movie would go on to open at No 1 all across North America. And, to make matters worse for the White House, it opened at No 1 in all 50 states, even in the deep south. It opened at No 1 in military towns such as Fort Bragg. Soldiers and their families were going to see it and, by many accounts, it became the top bootleg watched by the troops in Iraq. It broke the box office record long held by the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi for the largest opening weekend ever for a film that opened on 1,000 screens or less. It was, in the verbiage of Variety, major boffo, a juggernaut.

And in doing all of that, it had made me a target.

So the REAL liars in the media had to leap into action:

The attacks on me that followed were like mad works of fiction, crazy, madeup stuff that I refused to respond to because I didn’t want to dignify the noise. On TV, on the radio, in op-eds, on the internet – everywhere – it was suggested that Michael Moore hates America, he’s a liar, a conspiracy nut and a croissant-eater. The campaign against me was meant to stop too many Republicans from seeing the film.

brewski, please pry yourself away from this kind of filth. It’s hurting America. But most of all, watch the damn movie. I provided a free link above.

Starts up a year after the fact, stone walled and under financed. Oh yeah, and a large amount of their findings are sealed from public scrutiny for the next thirty years.

For me, a lot of the 9/11 Report ends up being “cause we say so”.

Larry:

Trillions was correct. The SF Chronicle (I think) followed up on the story. As far as they could tell, the military could eventually account for most of it.

As far as the Pentagon goes…..I’m having a real hard time with ANYTHING was allowed to hit it on that day. I truly don’t believe that the most well funded, technology advanced, well trained military in the history of mankind were a complete no show on that day. Forty plus years cold war funding, preparation and can’t even defend our nations capital. Right.

The Commission was well aware that their existence meant very little. They had no real powers or authority. They weren’t there to assign blame, just to ask questions. I think the military usually handles things a little different when you blow a call.

Honestly, I only read your comment at #44 as far as the eyewitness accounts, but thank you.

I am not a hero because I don’t have any children. I can’t even imagine the strength it would take to keep going in a case like that. But I’m sure that any American would have asked his children and his wife if they thought he was doing the right thing and I’m sure they would keep telling him to do the right thing. I think this is where Moore’s strength really comes from.

Based on history, and my own experience in the Army, it doesn’t surprise me that much that the military was unprepared for the 9/11 attacks. War plans, preparations, and training during peacetime are not always adequate to meet even realistic threats.

Let me give an example from the 1970s. We held practice alerts in Germany, getting up at 0400 to arm our tanks (the machine guns had to be carried from the arms room), get them cranked up (these were diesel engines in the middle of winter), and moved out of the motor pool to a dispersed assembly area. We could do this in 40 minutes. However, the Czech border was about 3 minutes flying time from where we were. Everybody knew this was not a good system, but nobody at the battalion level could change it. As a lowly lieutenant, I knew better than to write scathing memos to the brigade commander.

Similarly, the F-16s stationed at Andrews AFB on September 11, 2001 were unarmed. And that’s how they went to war, because it would have taken another hour to put weapons on them. They have a better system now, but the military brass sometimes have to learn the hard way.

You have a point there. The MSM consensus can be fuzzy around the edges, but the so-called “Serious People” always seem to know what’s inside the Overton window and what’s not.

The MSNBC 9/11 anniversary programming included a tape of Tom Brokaw solemnly intoning that we would have to give up some of our freedoms in order to combat terrorism. Funny how he could say that on day one! On September 10, 2001 that would have been an extreme viewpoint.

As you know, my definition of an official story is narrower– it would have to come from Bush administration officials. They didn’t bother to produce an official story, and even tried to stop the 9/11 Commission.

He has his own TV show, “Conspiracy Theory.” It drew an average 1.6 million viewers in the first two seasons. Ventura now refuses to fly on commercial airplanes, which may mean no third season episodes.

You were the first to bring up Jesse Ventura. I find Ventura’s show entertaining because it often comes across as satire. That’s why I wonder if he really believes the theories he chases after so theatrically. He’s a smart guy, and there’s never any solid evidence.

Thanks for bring up the “missing” $2.3 trillion conspiracy theory, I had not heard that one. But it’s easy to debunk. The money wasn’t really missing (as in stolen), it just wasn’t properly accounted for because the DOD has 674 separate financial systems that don’t talk to one another. To put the problem in microcosm, it’s like noticing that money is missing from your bank account after not keeping track of the checks you wrote.

If we are going to use the “incompetence theory” again, then we would expect to see inquiries, demotions, dismissals, to correct the problem. We saw none.

FAA loses contact with Flight 77 at 8:50. Second plane hits tower at 9:03. Anyone in range of radio/TV on the planet is aware “America is under attack”. President is notified at 9:05 “America is under attack” at 9:05. Jets are scrambled at 9:24. President leaves school at approximately 9:30. Flight 77 hits Pentagon at 9:39.

Is there any protocol to defend our nations capital? What about the DC Air National Guard? What was their mission statement?

I think you answered your own question. The whole thing was over in an hour (United Flight 93 crashed at 10:03 am). Because of the failure to plan for this type of attack, communications were confused. A classic tactic that works very well is to hit at a time or place when/where the defenders are not sure who is in charge. The FAA handles hijackings, but defending against aerial attacks is the job of NORAD. We now know that four planes were hijacked, but during that crucial hour air traffic controllers were desperately trying to figure out the situation.

To provide combat units in the highest possible state of readiness. We will support the Air Force and other DOD agencies. We will provide operational support to our local communities whenever possible.

Sooo in our current information age, where communications come at the speed of light, we can only expect “pony express speed” responses from our domestic military bases built only fifteen miles away from the attack.

In hindsight we should have built it closer and turned them on to smoke signals…

They screwed up, what can you say? By the time what was happening was completely clear in the minds of the people in a position to do something about it, it was all over. Let’s hope we never have another situation where Air Force planes have to be ordered to shoot down airliners.

There is no 9/11 debate. On the one hand, there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand, there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks. The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.

That’s a funny link. Saying that the 9/11 “Truth movement” was created by professional architects, engineers, and distinguished scientists, is like saying that climate change denial is based on peer-reviewed research. There may be a grain of “truth” in that, but is so small you need a microscope to see it. The handful of “truther” architects, engineers and scientists are getting paid more money than they ever made before in their lives, traveling the world and giving lectures. This is a business, plain and simple.

Look, after 10 years of believing that the Bush administration attacked America on 9/11, why can’t they find any confirmation of that theory? The MIHOP conspiracy would have involved thousands of people, some of them high-rise demolition experts who don’t even work for the government.

But no, they point to the presence of iron oxide in Manhattan as proof that thermite, which is not an explosive, brought down the World Trade Center buildings. Iron oxide is commonly known as rust.

Tim–

Your Pentagon picture is obviously a scale model, and the accompanying article even says so. It’s not the least bit unusual that someone would consider an accidental plane crash scenario, because Reagan National Airport is less than a mile from the Pentagon.

Let me explain it again. Commercial airplane hijackings were the responsibility of the FAA. NORAD didn’t plan for what happened on September 11, 2001. They should have, but they didn’t.

As for the lack of accountability by the Bush administration, I think that’s traceable to Karl Rove’s political strategy of never admitting error — which also seems to fit former President Bush’s personality. It’s why they opposed the formation of the 9/11 Commission. It’s why Condi Rice lied and testified that no one could have anticipated using hijacked airplanes to take out buildings.

Interesting tidbit. There’s a lady named April Gallop who was working inside the part of the Pentagon that was hit who refuses to believe a plane crashed into the building. In 2008 she filed a lawsuit against Dick Cheney, accusing him of being “complicit” in the 9/11 attacks.

The suit was thrown out as frivolous in 2010. An appeals court upheld the dismissal in April. A motion to reconsider was denied in July.

“We’re appealing,” Gallop says. The last option is the U.S. Supreme Court.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: My question, sir, and I mean no disrespect, but we’ll save time if you listen to what I ask you. My question is: The concept of terrorists using airplanes as weapons was not something which was unknown to the U.S. intelligence community on September 10th, 2001, isn’t that fair to say?

GEN. MCKINLEY: I’d like the intelligence community to address that. I would find it hard to believe that they hadn’t speculated against that. But it was unavailable to us at the time.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, let’s start, for example, with September 12th, 1994, a Cessna 150L crashed into the South Lawn of the White House, barely missing the building, and killing the pilot. Similarly, in December of 1994, an Algerian armed Islamic group of terrorists hijacked an Air France flight in Algiers and threatened to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. In October of 1996, the intelligence community obtained information regarding an Iranian plot to hijack a Japanese plane over Israel and crash it into Tel Aviv. In August of 1988, the intelligence community obtained information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center. The information was passed on to the FBI and the FAA.

In September of 1998, the intelligence community obtained information that Osama bin Laden’s next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport and detonating it. In August 2001, the intelligence community obtained information regarding a plot to either bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi from an airplane, or crash an airplane into it. In addition, in the Atlanta Olympics, the United States government and the Department of Justice and my colleague Jamie Gorelick were involved in planning against possible terrorist attacks at the Olympics, which included the potential of an aircraft flying into the stadium. In July 2001, the G-8 summit in Genoa, attended by our president, among the measures that were taken were positioning surface-to-air missile ringing Genoa, closing the Genoa airport and restricting all airspace over Genoa.

Was not this information, sir, available to NORAD as of September 11th, 2001?

GEN. MCKINLEY: It’s obvious by your categorization that those events all took place and that NORAD had that information. I would only add, sir, that the intelligence data that we postured our forces for and the training and the tactics and the procedures that we used to prepare our missions for support of the combatant commander of NORAD had hijacking as a primary intercept tactic. And we have some of the finest fighter pilots, as you know in the world, who are some of the best people in the world who can do their mission extremely well. But we had not postured prior to September 11th, 2001, for the scenario that took place that day.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, obviously it would be hard to imagine posturing for the exact scenario. But isn’t it a fact, sir, that prior to September 11th, 2001, NORAD had already in the works plans to simulate in an exercise a simultaneous hijacking of two planes in the United States?

GEN. MCKINLEY: Colonel Scott, do you have any data on that? I’m not aware of that, sir. I was not present at the time.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: That was Operation Amalgam Virgo.

MR. SCOTT: Yes, sir. Specifically Operation Amalgam Virgo, which I was involved in before I retired, was a scenario using a Third World united — not united — uninhabited aerial vehicle launched off a rogue freighter in the Gulf of Mexico. General Arnold can back me up — at the time one of our greatest concerns was the proliferation of cruise missile technology and the ability for terrorist groups to get that technology, get it close enough to our shores to launch it. In fact, this exercise — in this exercise we used actual drone — NQM-107 drones, which are about the size of a cruise missile, to exercise our fighters and our radars in a Gulf of Mexico scenario.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: You are referring to Amalgam 01, are you not?

MR. SCOTT: Yes, sir, Amalgam 01.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I am referring to Amalgam 02, which was in the planning stages prior to September 11th, 2001, sir. Is that correct?

MR. SCOTT: That was after I retired, and I was not involved in 02.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Will you accept that the exercise involved a simultaneous hijacking scenario?

MR. SCOTT: I was not involved in 02.

GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, I do have some information on 02, if you would allow me to read it for the record.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Please.

GEN. MCKINLEY: Amalgam Virgo in general, 02, was an exercise created to focus on peacetime and contingency NORAD missions. One of the peacetime scenarios that is and has been a NORAD mission for years is support to other government departments. Within this mission falls hijackings. Creativity of the designer aside, prior to 9/11, hijack motivations were based on political objectives — i.e., asylum or release of captured prisoners or political figures. Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the script writers to invoke creativity and broaden the required response for players.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, isn’t that a bit fatuous given the specific information that I’ve given you? It wasn’t in the minds of script writers when the Algerians had actually hijacked the plane, which they were attempting to fly into the Eiffel Tower. And all of the other scenarios which I mentioned to you. I don’t mean to argue with you. But my question is, sir, given the awareness of the terrorists use of planes as weapons, how is it that NORAD was still focusing outward protecting the United States against attacks from the Soviet Union or elsewhere, and was not better prepared to defend against the hijacking scenarios of a commercial jet laden with fuel used as a weapon to target citizens of the United States? When you say our training was vestigial, I think you said it in capsulated form. But would you agree that on the basis of the information available that there could be, could have been better preparedness by NORAD to meet this threat?

GEN. MCKINLEY: In retrospect, sir, I think I would agree with your comment.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: With respect to the bases that were available for protecting the East Coast, you — and Colonel Scott has gone through the scrambling of aircraft — I wanted to focus just on one flight, Flight 77, and then Secretary Lehman will ask you some more specific questions. With respect to Flight 77, sir, you testified previously before the House Armed Services Committee, and General Eberhardt was questioned — you are familiar with his testimony?

GEN. MCKINLEY: Yes, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Okay. He was questioned about Flight 77, and because of the use of Langley Air Base, which is 105 miles from our capital, as opposed to, say, Andrews Air Force Base, which is in the neighborhood, the question arises again about the positioning and the thought behind the positioning of fighter planes to protect our capital in an enhanced terrorist situation such as existed on September 10th, September 9th, 2002.

Let me ask you about Flight 77 again. The question was the timeline we have been given is that at 8:55 on September 11th American Airlines Flight 77 began turning east away from its intended course, and at 9:10 Flight 77 was detected by the FAA radar over West Virginia heading east. That was after the two planes struck the Trade Center towers. Is that correct, Colonel Scott?

MR. SCOTT: Yes, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, 15 minutes later, at 9:25, the FAA notified NORAD, according to this statement, that Flight 77 was headed toward Washington. Was that the first notification, 9:25, that NORAD or DOD had that Flight 77 was probably hijacked? And, if it was, do you know why it took 15 minutes for FAA to notify NORAD? General Eberhardt said, “Sir, there’s one minor difference: I saw it as 9:24, which you do as well, that we were notified, and that’s the first notification we received.” “Do you know if that was the first notification to DOD?” “Yes, sir, that’s the first documented notification that we received.” And I want to focus on the word “documented,” because it’s very important for us to know when NORAD actually received notification, given the fact that planes had already crashed into the World Trade Center, and given I am sure the assumption that these were terrorist acts and there could be more coming, more planes coming.

Is it in fact correct, sir, that the first notification of any type that NORAD received was not until 9:24 with respect to Flight 77?

GEN. MCKINLEY: With your concurrence, sir, I would like to ask General Arnold to address that. He was on the floor that morning.

GEN. ARNOLD: Thank you. The simple answer to your question is I believe that to be a fact: that 9:24 was the first time that we had been advised of American 77 as a possible hijacked airplane. Our focus — you have got to remember that there’s a lot of other things going on simultaneously here, was on United 93, which was being pointed out to us very aggressively I might say by the FAA. Because our radars looking outward and not inward, the only way for us to know where anything was was for the FAA to pass along that information to us.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, is it not the case, General Arnold, that there was an open line established between FAA, NORAD and other agencies, including CIA and FBI, that morning?

GEN. ARNOLD: Well, I wasn’t on that line at that particular time if that were the case. In fact, there is an open line established between our sectors at really the tactical level where they are controlling the aircraft talking to the FAA controllers from time to time. We did not have an open line at that time with the FAA. That is not accurate.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: You did not. You were not — NORAD was not in contact —

GEN. ARNOLD: The continental United States NORAD region, my headquarters, responsible for the continental United States air defense, did not have an open line with the FAA at that time.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Was there some NORAD office that had an open line with the FAA —

GEN. ARNOLD: Our —

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Excuse me. Let me finish my question, please. Was there some NORAD office — and you’ll forgive us because we had asked for this information prior to the hearing from FAA and did not receive it — but we are advised that there was indeed an open line between either the net or some other name given to a — essentially an ongoing conference where under, in real time, FAA was providing information as it received it, immediately after the first crash into the Towers, we were told, with respect to each of the events that were ongoing of any remarkable nature? I see General McKinley is nodding.

GEN. MCKINLEY: I’d like to, if I may, address this, based on my research and review for this commission. It’s my understanding that the FAA was in contact with our Northeast Air Defense Sector at Rome, New York. Understanding the relationship of how we defend North America from threats, NORAD located in Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, our continental NORAD region, our air operations center located at Tindel Air Force Base in Florida — that’s where the joint force air component commander resides. And then we have three sectors based on the size and volume of our country that handle that. It is my understanding from talking with both FAA and our supervisors at the Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, that those lines were open and that they were discussing these issues.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: So, is it fair to say that at least the NORAD personnel in Rome, New York, had information available to it in real time once it saw — and we were advised that this occurred at 9:02, which was then 22 minutes earlier that Flight 77 first was observed deviating from its course, something which in the context of what was going on that day would be quite interesting, if not remarkable? Colonel Scott, any comments?

You’ve called for action against Bush and Cheney for admitted crimes of illegal torture and wire tapping of Americans, and frankly, anything that would get these ghouls off the street would probably be a sufficient goal, but nothing has succeeded.

The whole world knows what happened here, but [the proud] don’t because the well lit media has violated their constitutional obligation to serve the greater good.

Second, what did I say? Same thing you copied/pasted, only with fewer words. FAA was responsible for hijackings of commercial aircraft inside the USA. NORAD was available to assist, but they didn’t have that as a primary mission. After all, what could they do besides shoot down planes?

Condi simply lied when she said “no one could have anticipated…”, that’s why we make fun of her. Worst National Security Advisor ever. I mean, did she never see “Escape From New York” (1981) or “Executive Decision” (1996)?

The protection of continental skies is the responsibility of the
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which is comprised
of U.S. and Canadian air forces. NORAD’s mission of continental
protection involves controlling sovereign airspace, assessing and
warning of enemy air or missile attack, and intercepting or engaging
such threats. This mission is supported by an extensive network of
ground-, air-, and space-based radars, sensors, and satellites, as
well as up-to-date threat intelligence. NORAD maintains a core force
of air defense fighter squadrons to provide protection in the event
of an attack. A number of these interceptors are on 24-hour alert at
locations along the U.S. border to identify and intercept unknown
aircraft or objects. In addition, two alert sites are located in
Alaska. The aircraft at these sites are provided by the 3rd Fighter
Wing, a dual-tasked active air force F-15 unit stationed at Elmendorf
Air Force Base, Alaska.

……………….

NORAD defines air sovereignty as providing surveillance and control
of the territorial airspace, which includes:

intercepting and destroying uncontrollable air objects;

tracking hijacked aircraft;

assisting aircraft in distress;

escorting Communist civil aircraft; and

intercepting suspect aircraft, including counterdrug operations and
peacetime military intercepts.

“We have conducted hijack events
in
every exercise that
Mr.
Merchent
can
remember
(he’s
beenhere for
16
years). As a matter of fact we had conducted 3 hijack scenarios in the week leading
up
to
9/11.
Additionally, prior to 9/11 we estimated that CMOC ran 5 hijack scenarios each month”

This information was known to the members of the 9/11 Commission and considered in their recommendations. Miles Kara, who was a professional staff member of the Commission:

There are two issues concerning training, exercises, and war games. First is the notion that the US Government, NORAD specifically, had an exercise history which specified that hijackers would seize multiple aircraft and use them as weapons. Second is the impression that ongoing exercises and war games on 9-11 impeded or hampered the air defense response. The answer to the first issue is that the exercise history did not prepare either NORAD or the US Government to face the threat it did on 9-11. While exercise scenarios generally included a hijack as one event, such play was notional, a paper exercise. The answer to the second issue is that the ongoing training, exercises and war games were a net positive for the air defense response that day.

Do you have a point you want to make? I can’t read your mind over the Internet. 😉

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me turn to the subject of the state of the intelligence community’s knowledge regarding the potential for the use of planes, airplanes, as weapons, a subject of obvious interest to this commission. Did the subject of planes as weapons come up in planning for security of the Olympics held in Atlanta in 1996?

MR. FREEH: Yes. I believe it came up in a series of these, as we call them, special events. These were intergovernmental planning strategy sessions and operations. And I think in the years 2000, 2001, even going back maybe to the 2000 (sic) Olympics, that was always one of the considerations in the planning, and resources were actually designated to deal with that particular threat.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: So it was well-known in the intelligence community that one of the potential areas or devices to be used by terrorists, which they had discussed, according to our intelligence information, was the use of airplanes, either packed with explosives or otherwise, in suicide missions.

MR. FREEH: That was part of the planning for those events. That’s correct.

And your point is what? I can say it if you want me to, but you seem very reluctant to say it yourself. Why play games?

Look, if NORAD and the FAA thought about the hijacking issue as much as you seem to think, then why was it still possible, on September 11, 2001, to turn off the radar transponder on a commercial jet? That would have been a relatively simple fix.

The conclusion that they were unprepared seems obvious to me, but that’s what the 9/11 Commission said after examining all the evidence– including the information that remains classified. It’s not just because I say so at all.

WASHINGTON, Dec 14: Suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden may be planning strikes on Washington or New York to avenge a US missile strike on his Afghan headquarters in August, Time magazine reported on Sunday.
“We’ve hit his headquarters, now he hits ours,” the magazine quotes a State Department aide as saying. US Attorney General Janet Reno organised an exercise at FBI headquarters in Washington on October 14 to plan for a possible terror attack by bin Laden, the weekly said.

Why won’t the LIHOP/MIHOP people say what they believe? Instead they duck the question. Embarrassed?

The facts are clear. The FAA and NORAD were not ready to deal with the type of hijacking that happened during the 9/11 attacks. They ought to have been prepared, but they were not.

Also, everyone knows the Clinton administration was focused on the al-Qaeda threat. Then the Bush administration came into office with the idea of undoing everything Clinton did. They ignored Clinton holdover Richard Clarke. They never even held a principals meeting about al-Qaeda until after the 9/11 attacks. In 2003, Bush invaded Iraq and stopped looking for bin Laden, once again putting al-Qaeda low on the priority list.

Why won’t the LIHOP/MIHOP people say what they believe? Instead they duck the question. Embarrassed?

I think this is where Cavs’ quote comes in:#79:

There is no 9/11 debate. On the one hand, there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand, there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks. The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.

The facts are the facts. The opinion of Miles Kara, who helped write the 9/11 Commission Report, is based on the facts.

The truther “credentialed experts” are like the handful of scientists who are climate change denialists, they are outliers making a living as contrarians. Ask 99 percent of architects, engineers, and physicists what happened to those buildings on September 11, 2001 and they will tell you they were hit by a Boeing 757 and two 767s.

I want a new investigation. I want all the facts on the table. I want it all open to public scrutiny. I want our government to “move heaven and earth” to give the “official account of what happened on 9/11/2001.

Tens of thousands have been held accountable for, and paid with their lives for, the events of 9/11.

Not one in our government has been held accountable for the miserable failure to defend our country, let alone our nations capital. Despite having every every conceivable tool at their disposal short of the highjackers inviting them to their meetings.

Come on now, let’s not so blithely overlook the chaos, lies, etc advanced by those who – though, they too were taken with the catastrophic success of the terrorists – seek to enslave the planet for their own profit.

I sympathize with your wish list, however the current administration is committed to “looking forward not backward.” Those responsible for the failures ten years ago are not losing any sleep worrying about consequences.

I’m not a fan of Bill Maher, but perhaps his funniest joke ever was this:

“But isn’t there something wrong when I’m the ONLY guy in the country that got fired for 9/11?”

It would be nice to have all the facts, but a passing familiarity with history informs me that never happens. Contradictions remain unresolved, people die without telling what they know, records are lost or destroyed, etc.

Serious question. Is there any possible 9/11 investigation you might consider “legitimate”?

I’m not sure what you’re hoping for here. Both President Bush and VP Cheney have freely and openly confessed, in public and on the record, to violations of the federal anti-torture statute that could land them in prison for 20 years if convicted. No theories required, they owned up to their crimes before TV cameras and in their memoirs. Yet both are walking around free to this day.

There is no point in trying to take them to court on an impossible-to-prove charge, when you have a slam-dunk case on torture. If anyone wants to prosecute. Literally any U.S. Attorney or D.A. in America could open a torture investigation. Any legal authority in the world could, it’s universal jurisdiction. The Spanish already did.

You hit on what’s driving me crazy. They did openly admit to crimes against their own people concerning illegal wiretapping and crimes against other nations involving waterboarding.

I said that in this thread.

What can we do to get these dudes off the streets?

All I really know about 911 is that I saw three buildings come down in freefall after two of them were hit by flimsy airplanes which is obviously impossible. All Americans who were alive at the time saw that with their own eyes!

Not “freefall.” Do we have to debunk that again? I will if you make me, but isn’t the burden of proof on the MIHOP people to explain how all the WTC buildings could have been secretly rigged for demolition under the noses of 20,000 office workers, and why none of the hundreds of demolition experts needed for the job has come forward over a period of ten years?

For Christ’s sake Richard, even NIST had to admit that building seven came down at freefall speed after seeing the video and it wasn’t hit by an airplane:

Well OK, they only said it came down at NEAR freefall speed. Again; we saw it with our own eyes and so did they. NIST probably didn’t want to go all the way and just admit they were wrong. Protecting your job, (or basic integrity), is important to some.

Pancaking theories probably wouldn’t look good on a resume’ at this point.

I think it’s telling that once again you fail to address the burden of proof issue. Just for starters, tell me how it’s possible for demolition teams to work for weeks in occupied buildings without being noticed. They would have had to make thousands of holes in the walls and floors, and bring in tons of explosives past building security.

J.L. Hudson’s in Detroit, Michigan, the tallest building ever demolished professionally, was 26 stories tall. “It took us 24 days with 12 people doing nothing but loading explosives…” according to James Santoro of Controlled Demolition Incorporated. Now do the math for two 110-story buildings, plus at least one more building with 47 floors. Can you think of a more absurdly complex plan to kill Americans?

In every photo and every video, you can see columns far outpacing the collapse of the building. Not only are the columns falling faster than the building but they are also falling faster than the debris cloud which is ALSO falling faster than the building. This proves the buildings fell well below free fall speed.

For a more sophisticated analysis with graphs, see this paper written by Dr. Frank Greening.

It’s time for me to go to work. But if you want a separate debunk for WTC 7, I’ll be happy to provide one.

The reason the truthers are confused about this is because they are fixated on a selectively-edited video of the second stage of the collapse of WTC 7, when the building’s northern facade went down very fast. Before than, the other parts the building were already collapsing — leaving the north side unsupported.

People have been looking for credible evidence to support LIHOP/MIHOP for ten years, and they haven’t found any. OTOH there is overwhelming factual evidence that indicates 19 al-Qaeda hijackers flew two Boeing 767s and a 757 into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

I’m still waiting for you to explain how hundreds of demolition experts managed to spend weeks rigging those buildings with explosives, and running wires everywhere without being noticed by security or 20,000 office workers. And where are all those demolition guys now? Why hasn’t just one of them come forward to say he’s really sorry about killing thousands of people? Just asking questions.

Look, the south side of WTC 7 sustained major damage from the collapse of the towers. The building crumbled first on the south side, then the north facade fell over and landed atop the debris pile. Just like this:

Let’s be serious for a minute and think. Is this how you plan to put Dick Cheney behind bars? By claiming a building collapsed evenly when the evidence shows it collapsed unevenly?

No part of the Trade towers, (which fell straight down), landed on top of building seven. One of the fake theories put out there is that a huge antenna from the top of the towers fell on building seven and caused it to collapse. Of course I’m not an insider on any of this and have never even been to New York. Maybe Saddam’s statue fell on building seven.

What the hell is that rubble resembling a waffle, (or part of building seven), doing on top of the building NEXT to building seven prior to it’s pancaking, (or whatever)?

If NIST can get away with being silly, so can I. The photo looks like an obvious photoshop.

I grew up in New York and visited the World Trade Center several times. I’m not good with heights, and just looking out the windows from the 107th Floor of WTC 2 made me dizzy, especially when the building swayed slightly in the wind. You can think of tall buildings as an enormous store of kinetic energy. All the power that went into their construction can be released instantly in a collapse. What goes up must come down.

I’ll wait as long as it takes for that explanation of how the demolition crews got in and did their work without anybody seeing them. I can think of several theories, but they all involve science fiction.

I think Larry makes a good point. According to the graph, #2 comes down in 11.5 seconds. So that is still 10 stories a second. That is pretty amazing. 110 stories of steel framed building comes down at a rate of 10 stories a second. Straight down.

…Actually, let me save you the trouble. The demolition permit referenced on the New York City building permit application refers to buildings or other structures that are already on the site and must be demolished to make way for new construction.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
–Mark Twain

Believe me, I respect your perspective on just about everything but I’ve already tried to answer you about what might have happened in relation to demolition teams.

I don’t want to comb through volumes of data right now, but I did that earlier while arguing with you about this. I have told you more then once that I don’t pay that much attention to the 911 theories but I did come upon one thing that might explain your query. I don’t know why you didn’t respond to my pointing this out at the time.

Steven Jones said that he found unmistakable evidence of thermite powder samples all around New York after the buildings came down, (not simple rust).

As I remember it. he also said that he had discovered unused buckets of paint that contained thermite which may have been used at the Trade Towers.

Also, as I remember it, he never made the obvious connection that anybody could make. I’m not sure why, but here goes:

You wouldn’t have to have dozens or hundreds of demolition experts sneaking around the Trade Center and hiding their involvement in the worst crime in American history at all. All you would need is a bunch of painters with no knowledge of what they were painting with.

As for thermite (a mixture of powdered or granular aluminum metal and powdered iron oxide that burns at extremely high temperatures when ignited), it burns slowly relative to explosive materials and would require several minutes in contact with a massive steel section to heat it to a temperature that would result in substantial weakening. Separate from the WTC towers investigation, NIST researchers estimated that at least 0.13 pounds of thermite would be required to heat each pound of a steel section to approximately 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially). Therefore, while a thermite reaction can cut through large steel columns, many thousands of pounds of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the building. This makes it an unlikely substance for achieving a controlled demolition.

Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions.

In short, the painter theory doesn’t make sense.

Tim–

Please think. Buildings are built to last for a century or more. Demolition techniques change over time. How can you make a realistic plan for something that might happen that far in the future? You are welcome to prove me wrong, and if you do I’ll accept any verifiable facts you can reference. You see, that’s how a reasonable debate is conducted.

For personal reasons, I don’t place any credence in NIST, (something about pancakes or waffles), but here is a paragraph from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide that produces an exothermic oxidation-reduction reaction known as a thermite reaction. If aluminium is the reducing agent it is called an aluminothermic reaction. Most varieties are not explosive, but can create short bursts of extremely high temperatures focused on a very small area for a short period of time. The thermite is simply a mixture of metal, often called the “fuel” and an oxidizer. Its form of action is very similar to other fuel-oxidizer mixtures like black powder.

If anybody ever throws a thermite grenade at me, I hope it’s a slow one!

Jones’s obsession is an imaginary substance called “nanothermate” which he claims is a super-explosive that must have been used in the WTC disaster. How did it get there? He hypothesizes paint containing this super-duper explosive was applied to WTC structural beams sometime before 9/11, though when, how or by whom he can’t quite say.

After ten years, the best the MIHOP theorists can come up with is exploding paint? And they have no evidence that the paint ever existed, or when it might have been applied to the WTC structural steel (in 1968?).

Seriously, I have personally placed a thermite grenade on an engine block and pulled the pin. It probably left an iron oxide residue, but the engine block was already rusty so I could not say for sure. 😉

You surmise that the Trade Towers were brought down by plane fuel alone, and yet you mock any possibility that a combination of plane fuel and possibly explosive thermite painted on the buildings could be plausible?

You said yourself:

You are entitled to be amazed. The collapse of 110-story buildings has only happened twice in history.

Yeah: within an hour of each other and on the same day a 40 something story building in the same city came down.

Conspiracies aren’t just built in a day. For all we know the thermite was installed when the WTC was constructed. If I recall correctly (and of course there’s no taking that to the bank) both Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were NYC building inspectors at that time.

That’s the ticket. In 1968, 27-year-old Dick Cheney set his dastardly plot in motion, then the following year went to Washington to take a job as a congressional intern. Comic book super-villains can’t match the evil genius of our former VP.

Pat Curley on Screw Loose Change summarizes what I think is the thought process:

Jonathan Swift observed centuries ago that you cannot reason a man out of an idea that he was never reasoned into in the first place. Truthers do not construct their arguments rationally, building evidence and seeing where that evidence takes them. They start with the conclusion: Bush/Cheney did it and work backwards, seeking little facts that would appear to prop up that deduction.

I think this is why after ten years I have not yet seen a LIHOP or MIHOP timeline of events, or any coherent evidence for either. None of the truthers seem to go beyond stuff like the “amazing” presence of iron oxide in lower Manhattan. It’s a sign of faith-based logic when people can’t connect their beliefs to the real world, and have to ignore mountains of evidence in order to keep from having to change their minds.

For thirty years we have the twin towers. Two of the burliest built scyscrapers ever constructed. Overbuilt by some experts.

Then 9/11 happened.

By the next morning, we were hearing how inadequate they were. Then NIST tells us how they were designed to fall straight down like teepees after a fire at a rate of 10 stories a second in a gravity driven collapse.

I just don’t understand your rock solid trust of NIST and the 911 commission.

Under Bush, every single office that was designed to give the Americans trustworthy oversight was staffed with people who usually didn’t do their job, or purposefully corrupted the mission of that office.

You name it: the SEC, FCC, EPA, CPB, FEMA, ect.

What in the world would make NIST any different. NIST has been totally silent on the danger of the voting machines and has taken down earlier studies done when they were concerned about the machines in the 1980’s

When they finally got around to appointing a committee to study fraud in voting, James Baker gets the top appointment – JAMES BAKER. The man who did everything he could to steal the 2000 election.

The 911 commission was originally going to be headed by – of all people – Henry Kissinger. Of the others who got picked, two of them quit out of embarrassment, (Bob Graham and Max Cleland)

Did you watch my Jessie Ventura video, or are you still brushing up on Popular Mechanics?

On the tenth anniversary of the Trade Tower attacks, this is the most interesting new information on why we should have a legitimate investigation where Bush doesn’t get to sit on Cheney’s lap while being interviewed and everybody has to be under oath for once.

I watched Jesse Ventura’s show before you knew he was on TV, I think. Didn’t want to watch it again online. Ventura is in the entertainment business just like Richard Gage, Steve Jones, David Ray Griffin, and Alex Jones, only he’s more up front about it.

OK, now to Richard Clarke. I like Clarke, I really do. He failed in his job, but unlike the Bushies he had the decency to apologize in public. Of course, Clarke is cashing in on terrorism too with his books and consulting business.

1. Clarke is pointing fingers at the usual suspects in the CIA, but otherwise has very little to say that wasn’t in the 9/11 Commission report.

2. He is only offering informed speculation, at best. “Clarke acknowledges that he does not have any evidence to back up his claims.”

3. Even if what Clarke says is true (it could be, even though we may never know), it does not support LIHOP or MIHOP. Nobody in the article claims the CIA knew about the 9/11 plot in advance.

I asked you before what kind of investigation you wanted, and now you have partially answered the question. But I wonder, if you were guilty of participating in the most treasonous plot ever in U.S. history, would you answer questions truthfully under oath?

What the hell, let’s have another 9/11 investigation. Any U.S. attorney or D.A. can initiate one, and take sworn testimony.

I think it’s funny how you begrudge the people on your list the few thousands of dollars they’ve made since 9/11. Yet say nothing about how lucrative that day was for our government and military. Billions and Trillions.

You first. It’s looking like you can’t meet that criteria for the “incompetence theory”.

I linked to a story about a theory that molten aluminum from the planes’ airframes might have come into contact with water from building sprinklers, causing explosions in WTC 1 & 2.
UPDATE: Russ Baker: Newly-uncovered evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks.

Sorry, but you can’t beat the 9/11 Commission report with nothing. The links I provided are to scenarios that fit within the report’s timeline and conclusions. Of course, you wouldn’t know that unless you read the report.

If you are claiming that explosives were triggered on every floor of the WTC towers, then you have to explain who set what charges, when and where they did it (without being noticed by the tens of thousands of people who worked there), why it was done, and how the conspiracy originated.

The structural engineering community rejects the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory. Its consensus is that the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings was a fire-induced, gravity-driven collapse, an explanation that does not involve the use of explosives.

You can’t conduct a logical argument by throwing out dubious factoids at random.

First of all, it’s not my graph. I cited the source, Dr. Frank Greening. The graph shows the minimum observed collapse times (some estimates are several seconds longer), both of which are nevertheless slower than free fall. So that claim is easy to disprove.

My claim is that according to Greening, FEMA and NIST the towers collapsed completely down upon themselves in 11 to 12 seconds. OK?

This where the “dubious” math comes in….

If you are using windows xp, hit start, all programs, accessories, calculator.

In the calculator, enter 12, then /, then 110, then =.

you should come up with this: 0.109090909…….

You with me still?

Now this means that 110 stories of steel structure collapsed down upon itself at a rate of one floor every .109 seconds.
Or roughly ten stories a second. One floor every one tenth of a second. FACT.

Another FACT I used to illustrate the FACT the towers collapsed at an extremely rapid rate was this:

A hummingbird flaps its wings up to nine times faster than floors “pancaked” in the towers on 9/11.
They can hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings 12–90 times per second (depending on the species).

No one is disputing the fact that WTC 1 & 2 collapsed very rapidly. From the NIST FAQ:

NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2.

…From video evidence, significant portions of the cores of both buildings (roughly 60 stories of WTC 1 and 40 stories of WTC 2) are known to have stood 15 to 25 seconds after collapse initiation before they, too, began to collapse. Neither the duration of the seismic records nor video evidence (due to obstruction of view caused by debris clouds) are reliable indicators of the total time it took for each building to collapse completely.

Just to clarify, you’re NOT claiming that all floors of the WTC towers were secretly rigged with explosives by agents of the U.S. government? We can lay that to rest?

The NIST FAQ explains it, you don’t even need to read the actual report. I’m glad you are not a believer in controlled demolition. Perhaps you came to the same realization as Mike Metzger:

There are no facts in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Just a lot of theories, which eventually break down to “hey, we’re just asking questions” if someone questions the validity of such. No structural, civil, or any engineers agree with the truthers. Yet, most of my friends will try to explain the hard physics involved in structural collapses. None of these people are engineers, physicists, or even in a scientific field, for that matter. Someone’s supposed to take their word over an expert’s?

…Controlled demolitions: absolute bullshit. Now, I know there are some legitimate inconsistencies in the story that can’t be proven false. My problem, and your problem as well, is that we have been blatantly misled by people who are only interested in selling dvds and t-shirts.

There’s a difference between legitimate truth-seekers and the 9/11 truthers who take things on faith.

Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall, as seen in videos. As the stories below sequentially failed, the falling mass increased, further increasing the demand on the floors below, which were unable to arrest the moving mass.”
In other words, the momentum (which equals mass times velocity) of the 12 to 28 stories (WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively) falling on the supporting structure below (which was designed to support only the static weight of the floors above and not any dynamic effects due to the downward momentum) so greatly exceeded the strength capacity of the structure below that it (the structure below) was unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass. The downward momentum felt by each successive lower floor was even larger due to the increasing mass.

From #34

Analyses of the composite floor system under fire exposures determined from fire dynamics simulations and thermal analyses, predicted sagging subsequent to truss web diagonal buckling and failure of some seated connections (see NIST NCSTAR 1-6C). However, the vast majority of the connections remained intact. Further, the shear studs that attached the floor slab to the spandrel and the diagonal steel struts that connected the truss top chord to the intermediate columns also were capable of transferring inward pull forces. Thus, the sagging floors were capable of exerting an inward pull on the exterior columns and spandrel beams.

I’m getting mixed signals:

On one hand they say the floors below impact zones offer no resistance.

Yet the sagging floors are strong enough to pull in exterior columns to initiate collapse sequence.

Maybe you have the answer. I’m still wondering what happened to the hummingbird. 😉

Since you believe you know what really happened, maybe you can explain it. In years of these fruitless conversations, I am still waiting for someone to provide or link to a coherent MIHOP timeline. That’s why I suggested Tarpley. Maybe there’s a timeline in one of his books.

My point was that the most important questions revolve around the origin and motives of the al-Qaeda attackers. If you believe that the 9/11 attacks were the work of the U.S. government, then let’s have that information along with the source(s).

As far as I’m concerned there is no big mystery surrounding the fire-induced, progressive collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Undoubtedly there were explosions, as reported by eyewitnesses. But not a controlled demolition. The NIST investigations were very thorough, but they mainly addressed the question of what caused the collapses as opposed to what happened during the collapses. You seem to be implying that the top sections of WTC 1 & 2 were destroyed by explosives in midair. That’s unlikely, to say the least. It’s Richard Gage stuff.

All along I’ve been very open and truthful about what I think happened, and willing to explain even the small details to the best of my understanding. I’m open to new information. I accept that we are not likely to know everything there is to know.

The other side is full of smug certainty coupled with an unwillingness to explain anything. I’m tired of trying to guess what you think happened. Why not just say it?

Many people prefer explanations for disasters which feature expansive conspiracies, because it is more difficult to cope with the truth of incompetence or vulnerability to random events. Facts and logic sometimes cannot penetrate this kind of psychological armor, even over a period of years.

I’ll be interested in whatever links and other evidence you have that indicates the FAA was not the primary agency responsible for dealing with domestic commercial airplane hijackings in 2001.

Here we go again with YouTube. Look, you keep nitpicking until the details get so small it’s hard to care about them anymore, and then you claim you have NIST or the 9/11 Commission up against some imaginary “wall.”

Meanwhile, you steadfastly ignore polite requests to say what you think happened. Also, I’m not the one resorting to name-calling.

Of course, Bill Maher did not explain anything about LIHOP or MIHOP in the video. It was a discussion about Tony Bennett’s comment about why they attacked us.

You know what happened; it’s what always happens when anybody in this country says anything that people of power don’t want to hear. Death threats and shouts to shut up all over the media.

Maher and Michael Moore stood up for Tony Bennett because they have been there and done that. Maher says something funny on the show. Right after he lost his show for saying the hijackers were not cowards, he went on the Howard Stern show who said he wanted to drop a nuke on any random middle eastern country and, of course that caused no controversy.

Everybody knows that when parents tell their children to shup up, it’s because they have no case.

If you read the 9/11 Commission’s report, you would know that at the time of the 9/11 attacks the procedure for dealing with hijacked aircraft went like this:

1) Air traffic control determines that an airplane has been hijacked.

2) They report it up the chain of command to a designated hijack coordinator at FAA headquarters.

3) The hijack coordinator would then contact the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC) and the NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance.

4) If approval was given, the orders would be transmitted down NORAD’s chain of command to the interceptor pilots.

There had not been any domestic airplane hijackings since 1993. The designated FAA hijack coordinator wasn’t available on September 11, 2001 (he was in Puerto Rico). Instead, the responsibility of requesting military assistance fell to the FAA’s national operations manager, Benedict Sliney. It was his first day on the job. So, yeah, there were delays and some confusion.

On the NIST report, I said “they mainly addressed the question of what caused the collapses as opposed to what happened during the collapses.”

You are simply moving the goal posts with your demands, without bothering to explain your theory of what happened to the World Trade Center.

Larry–

Bill Maher is a well-known critic of truthers (he had them thrown out when they disrupted his show). So I would be surprised if he suddenly began to claim 9/11 was an inside job.

What you call “new revelations” were covered in the 9/11 Commission’s report years ago.

Glenn–

I’m willing to seriously examine your explanation and timeline of events for LIHOP/MIHOP, or a link to that information. That’s a standing offer for anyone who cares to take it up.

“the protocol was in place that the center that reported the hijacking would notify the military.… I go back to 1964, where I began my air traffic career, and they have always followed the same protocol.”

Do you suppose it’s possible that Mr. Sliney was attempting to make an excuse for not quickly realizing that due to the absence of the FAA hijack coordinator, it was his job to get military help?

Maybe he ought to have pointed out that it had been 8 years since the last hijacking, and the FAA was out of practice. Nevertheless they did take decisive action:

The Command Center’s national operations manager, Ben Sliney ordered all FAA facilities to instruct all airborne aircraft to land at the nearest airport. This was a totally unprecedented order. The air traffic control system handled it with great skill, as about 4,500 commercial and general-aviation aircraft soon landed without incident.

Also, we have to remember that the SOP in 2001 was for the Air Force to intercept a hijacked aircraft and follow it from a distance of five miles. There was no plan in place to attack civilian aircraft.

I’ll never get tired of asking this: What is the point you are trying to make? What do you think happened?

MR. GORTON: On 9/11, the Command Center effectively was the nerve center for information on suspicious aircraft. Yet as I understand it the Command Center had no defined role with respect to obtaining military assistance, fighter assistance. Is that correct? And, if so, why weren’t those authorities combined?

MR. SLINEY: Available to us at the Command Center of course is the military cell, which was our liaison with the military services. They were present at all of the events that occurred on 9/11.

The normal protocols for the events that were transpiring then — that is to say hijacked aircraft, which requires a notification to NORAD — those, at least I was given to understand, were made promptly — the notifications on each hijack. The —

MR. GORTON: You understood that they were made promptly?

MR. SLINEY: That’s correct.

MR. GORTON: It wasn’t you — it wasn’t your responsibility to do so?

MR. SLINEY: That is correct. I believe I am correct in stating that that responsibility devolves upon the air route traffic control center in whose jurisdiction that hijack occurs. I was given to understand that all such notifications were made. I had no reason to believe they were not.

The — I’m getting away from your question, though. You ask me if we had a procedure in place to deal with such an event — is that what you’re asking?

MR. GORTON: At the Command Center.

MR. SLINEY: With — well, I just want to be clear on this aspect of it. Dealing with aircraft that would be hijacked and used as weapons?

MR. GORTON: No.

MR. SLINEY: No. Dealing with hijacked —

MR. GORTON: Dealing with direct notification to the military or request for assistance from the military.

MR. SLINEY: In direct response to your question was FAA headquarters primarily through the security organization to request assistance from the military. We had no process in place where a Command Center would make such a request for a military assistance. I believe the military was involved, and you know I suppose in hindsight it’s too simplistic to say that they all look alike to me. If you tell the military you’ve told the military. They have their own communication web that I think defeated some of the notification processes, as I’ve been listening to today. But in my mind everyone who needed to be notified about the events transpiring was notified, including the military.

MR. GORTON: By the Command Center?

MR. SLINEY: Correct.

MR. BELGER: Senator, can I just respond?

MR. GORTON: Yes, you certainly can.

MR. BELGER: Just in direct response to your question, the protocol on that day — the official protocol on that day was for the FAA headquarters, primarily through the hijack coordinator, who is a senior person in the security organization, to request assistance from the NMCC if there was a need for DOD assistance. I mean, that was the formal protocol that day.

MR. GORTON: It wasn’t the formal protocol for Mr. Sliney to have gotten headquarters permission before he put in these ground stops?

MR. BELGER: I don’t agree with that personally. I think — I agree with Mr. Sliney completely. I think they had the authority to make that decision. I think they made the right call.

It was Sliney’s first day on the job as FAA national operations manager. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t up to date on current procedures for hijackings, since the last one was in 1993. So he did what seemed right at the time.

Tim, what are you implying? What is the argument you want to make? Tell us, please.

Again, NIST was primarily interested in what caused the World Trade Center buildings to collapse. That’s the question they were tasked with answering. I think that’s the same question that interests the MIHOP people too. It’s not as if they had nothing to say about the progressive collapse, that was in the report.

Can’t read your mind. Your point is what? The FAA stuff is LIHOP. Controlled demolition is MIHOP. At least pick one conspiracy theory and stick with it.

I can’t play any of the YouTube videos where you apparently get all your information due to having the wrong version of Flash. The last one had a link to a transcript. The author probably thinks he’s being oh-so-clever, because all good propaganda contains a grain of truth. It’s pure crap, but there are those who will gobble it up and ask for more.

He ought to be ashamed of himself, particularly for falsely implying that the SEAL Team 6 members killed in Afghanistan last month had been involved in the bin Laden raid (like President Obama had them killed as part of a cover-up, yeah, right). They weren’t, and I think he knows that because of the way the statement was worded.

The problem with virtually all government conspiracy theories is that they are derived from some fictional comic-book world made up of genius super-villains and super-secret government agencies that can do virtually anything without being caught. Sorry, that’s imaginary.

In the real world, government bureaucrats often don’t react effectively to rapidly-developing emergencies that have not been planned for. In the real world, thousands of witnesses to what would have been the greatest act of treason in U.S. history could not keep it a secret for a decade or more.

Meanwhile, in the United States, a growing chorus of voices—some very establishment voices—are demanding accountability and candor. Graham and Clarke have now been joined by retired CIA officer Bob Baer, by several former FBI agents and by Tom Kean, chairman of presidential 9/11 commission, all of whom express concern that the full story has not been permitted to emerge.

Even reading the first two paragraphs lays waste to your saying it was covered by the 911 omission commission.

Let me clarify. I linked to the article because the story of the Ghazzawis is a minor new revelation, and it raises again the issue of likely Saudi involvement that has been obvious all along. So it’s a new tidbit of information that is consistent with the other evidence. The story also raises the question about whether the Ghazzawis knew about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time.

I’ll let Larry explain how this “could prove LIHOP at very high levels.”

Saudi support for al-Qaeda has long been alleged. For example, on page 66 of the 9/11 Commission’s report they mention that Saudi financiers backed bin Laden’s operations in Afghanistan.

In 2009, lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims obtained documents showing Saudi financial support for al-Qaeda. However, nothing in these documents indicated Saudi officials had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

You may be also aware that Lloyd’s of London sued Saudi Arabia for $215 million in U.S. federal court earlier this month. That suit alleged that Saudi defendants “knowingly” provided material support and resources to al-Qaeda in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. It is now on hold, possibly pending an out-of-court settlement.

Al-Qaeda is of course opposed to the Saudi ruling family. The financing of bin Laden through 2001 was probably a quid pro quo, to keep Saudi Arabia from being the target of terrorist attacks.

There is another issue, which is the accusation that the FBI concealed information from the 9/11 Commission. We deserve to know more about that.

However, I predict the Ghazzawi mystery isn’t going to lead anywhere. The FBI will never get a chance to question them. Apparently, they left behind nothing incriminating.

I still maintain that the outlines of “the full story” are known and documented. That is not to say we have all the details. Certainly it is past time to declassify everything the 9/11 Commission uncovered.